Tour bus flips over in wash amid Ariz. rain storm

DOLAN SPRINGS, Ariz. (AP) — A Las Vegas-bound tour bus carrying 33 people was swept away in northern Arizona by floodwaters Sunday and turned on its side as it tried to cross a wash amid heavy rains.

No one was injured. The bus was pushed down the wash for an estimated 300 yards before it turned on its side around 1:50 p.m. near Kingman, Ariz., said Patrick Moore, chief of the Northern Arizona Consolidated Fire District, which had firefighters at the scene.

People inside the bus, which had left the Grand Canyon Skywalk glass bridge, climbed out the driver's side windows and walked onto the shore.

Moore didn't know the name of the company that owned the bus. The bus company was sending another bus to pick up the tourists.

The crash happened as northern Arizona was hit with a second day of heavy rain.

Kingman is near the Arizona-Nevada stateline and about 100 miles southeast of Las Vegas.

The area where the bus accident occurred received 0.75 inches of rain in about an hour on Sunday afternoon, said Chris Stumpf, a National Weather Service forecaster in Las Vegas.

A flash flood warning was in effect when the accident occurred, he said, and the bus driver shouldn't have been driving through the area at the time.

"It was a really strong storm dumping quite a bit of rain ... and it caused flash flooding," Stumpf said. "They were driving on a portion of the road where they shouldn't have tried to drive across. They should not have been driving through there."